Senior Optical Navigation Responsible Engineer (Lunar)

Location: Redondo Beach; onsite

Salary: $210,000–$300,000 per year

Company

hirify.global develops spacecraft and lunar landing systems within an autonomous systems organization.

What you will do

• Own the terrain-relative navigation system end to end, including its concept of operations, requirements, architecture, interfaces, roadmap, backlog, and milestones.
• Translate lunar mission and landing needs into navigation requirements and error budgets.
• Lead camera, compute, and other descent-navigation sensor trades, including make-or-buy decisions and hardware selection, procurement, and testing.
• Define the onboard map and reference-data pipeline for lunar navigation.
• Define and lead verification through analysis, synthetic-image simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop with image injection, Monte Carlo campaigns, and field or flight testing.
• Define fault detection, health monitoring, and fallback modes; coordinate with GNC, flight software, avionics, mission design, autonomy, test, and mission operations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Physics, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in spacecraft or aircraft navigation, optical or vision-based navigation, or GNC systems engineering.
• Experience defining requirements, interfaces, and error budgets for a navigation or sensing system.
• Experience with verification, simulation, or testing of navigation or perception systems.
• Working knowledge of state estimation, including Kalman filtering, and the effects of measurement errors on navigation performance.
• Proficiency in Python and/or MATLAB and the ability to read and review C++ flight code.
• Excellent technical communication skills.
• Applicants must be U.S. Persons or eligible to obtain an export license because the position is subject to ITAR and EAR requirements.

Nice to have

• 10+ years of experience in spacecraft or aircraft navigation, optical or vision-based navigation, or GNC systems engineering.
• Experience with terrain-relative navigation, precision landing, hazard detection, landmark or crater localization, map-relative localization, or feature-tracking algorithms.
• Experience with lunar or planetary map products and tools, including Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery and digital elevation models.
• Experience with camera models, calibration, radiometry, and synthetic scene or image generation.
• Experience with laser altimeters, Doppler lidar or velocimeters, or flash lidar.
• Experience running field or flight-test campaigns for navigation sensors.
• Product owner or technical lead experience, including pacing development, managing a backlog, or overseeing suppliers.
• Experience with powered descent, entry-descent-landing, rendezvous and proximity operations, deep-space missions, or startup hardware development.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment with potential long-term incentives in the form of stock options.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
• Work in an iterative hardware-development environment supporting spacecraft manufacturing and lunar missions.